1. The Food. American cities like San Francisco and New York brag about having a melting pot of different cultures, and thus, a huge variety of restaurants. But Singapore, in our opinion, has them all beat. Because while Southeast Asian cuisines remain rare in the US, Singapore has them all and in their authentic greatness. Not only is there a variety of restaurants, but Singapore restaurants remain truer to the taste of the home country than, say, Tokyo, where the food is altered more toward Japanese tastes. On any given night when we want to eat out, it's a struggle to decide which of our favorite restaurants we want to go to, or if we'll try something completely new. Our sole lament is that there aren't enough good Mexican restaurants in Singapore; hopefully, someone will hear our plea and open one.
2. Changi International Airport. Singapore like to talk about becoming "world-class" this or "best in the world" at that. For the most part, it's all a load of crap. But when it comes to the airport, Singapore doesn't have to strive to become the best; they already are. There is nothing like coming home to Singapore from a business trip, passing through the ultra-efficient immigration, picking up your luggage in mere minutes after your plane arrives, and getting a taxi after waiting in a queue for less than five minutes. Hey, you even have time to stop off in the Duty Free shop and pick up something, and you'll still be through the airport in less than 30 minutes. Add that together with the range of shops and services to be found, the absence of machine gun toting security guards, and the candy dish at every immigration officers booth, and you've got the airport the world has to beat.
3. Safe Streets. Yes, it's practically a cliche to talk about Singapore as "clean and safe". While I don't necessarily believe the "clean" part anymore (we'll discuss that later), it's hard to dispute the "safe" factor. School children can still walk home by themselves without their parents fearing they will be kidnapped. Women can walk around after dark. There are no bands of roaming gypsy children to pick your pockets. As the Singaporean slogan says, "Low crime doesn't mean no crime.", but low crime is still a lot more than what most cities can say for themselves.
4. Public Transportation. There is sort of a love/hate relationship people have with mass transit, but to be fair, I have to include it as something we love. Now living near a train system, we find it almost unnecessary to take a taxi anymore. The buses go almost anywhere. And the whole system is cheap, cheap, cheap. Of course, there are reasons to hate the public transportation system as well, but we'll go into that later.